with Anger, created by the belief in growing dangers and a sense of incapacity in resisting them, on one side; on the other, deep resentment at injustice and stupidity.

The bishops, appointed by personal favoritism or political preferment, could but maintain a waiting attitude, being ill-suited to do battle with such sturdily-made opponents as the learned Tractarians. All this was indeed an effort in favor of the church, but it was in irresponsible hands, begun by men who were strong in faith and vehement in the unusual utterance which they employed, but who, while calling on the clergy to rally round their fathers, the bishops, did not hesitate in wishing for them a blessed termination in the "spoiling of their goods and martyrdom." As the movement progressed, it became aggressive in its doctrinal teachings. It flew in the face of even the soundest of the popular school believers, and at the same time, and most inconsistently, held up to popular ridicule the office of bishop, for which, all along, they claimed almost divine consideration. The bishops themselves were between the two fires of Tractarians and Evangelicals; the latter, just now profiting by the disfavor shown their natural enemies, the Tractarians, were coming again into recognition.

At last, the smouldering fires that burned low in almost every bishopric burst up into flames in the words of Bishop Sumner in 1838, who described the whole movement as a "work of Satan.” Three things combined to hurt it,-its hasty growth and precipitate judgments; a forgetfulness of the apostolic maxim, "All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient; " the unique position which the Church of England claims for itself between Roman authority on the one hand and Protestant freedom of individual opinion on the other. The old authorities, the elemental props to our mental equilibrium of faith and reason, are ever coming to the front in every thinking mind, and they require to be dealt with. The question faces us on a multitude of sides, and presents a different face at every turn. However near the human mind seems to come to a solution, - and in moments of exaltation even God is almost knowable, the distance is ever incommensurable. "Man never is, but always to be blest" in his gropings after such

ephemeral comforts. In this, as well as in the Romanist discussion, they confined themselves to uncompromising dogma, and forgot the state of the minds in which their seed was being scattered. Besides the tracts, of the largest number of which Newman was the author, there were published, as a part of the movement, Rose's "Manual," Froude's "Remains," Newman's "Lectures on Justification," "Grammar of Assent," Palmer's " Narrative," and some others of lesser note. A number of the books came out as a defence of the author's statements in support of the Oxford

movement.

Insidiously, though quite honorably, there crept through the ranks of the Tractarians, during the last years in which the tracts themselves were published, a Romanist sentiment. Yet they kept on in the work which was dear to them, with prayer for guidance, the while they felt the instinctive, unwilling changes that constitute a mysterious and perplexing process of mutability in religion. Views were tempered, and then almost before one was aware changed. How, then, should he speak? And how could he be silent? Perhaps the most realistic account of the process whereby a man changes the allegiance that is throned highest in the mind has been told by Cardinal Newman. It is not, however, wholly successful, nor can any account merely be so.

One event after another on the part of Oxford authorities caused the dissenting, aggressive hatred of the Tractarians to grow. With number ninety of the "Tracts for the Times," there came a culmination. It discussed the thirty-nine articles with respect to their relations to Roman teaching. The doctrinal bigotry and narrowness that had marked the tracts as a whole seemed to come to a head in number ninety. It marked the actual beginning of the Liberalizing wave that swept over Oxford, engulfing in its depths those who did not flee to Rome. Of these latter, the strength and backbone of Oxford, those only will be mentioned who were interested in the Tractarian movement. One after another lingered, and then the old familiar faces disappeared from the University shades, one by one: Mr. Ward, Mr. Capes, Mr. Oakeley, of Margarets, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Dalgairn, Mr. Christie, and Mr.

Simpson, fellow of Oriel, Mr. Northcote; and on the third of October, 1845, Mr. Newman requested the Provost of Oriel to remove his name from the books of the University.

But among those deeply affected by these changes, there were some who stood like rocks on a tempest-bound shore, Dr. Keble, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Williams, and Mr. Marriott accepted, with unshaken faith in the cause of the English church, the terrible separation. Charges of insincerity and cowardice, and worse, were heaped upon them, to be borne with unshrinking courage. They were charged with being associates of those who, by their change of faith, had betrayed the church.

It was a hopeless check to the movement. For the time, it seemed to the few faithful leaders that no recovery was possible. At last, they settled into comparative complaisance by believing it was but a new stage of the movement. They knew that from then on, stupendous obstacles were in their path. The strife which they must be a part in had for them the peculiar sadness of typical civil war, when one's foes are often one's very brothers. It was as sorry a plight as they well could have suffered. Their liberal critics in Oxford at first rallied them, then railed at them; then "the University assumed its wonted tranquillity; the panic had been succeeded by reaction; those devoted adherents who sadly watched Newman go over to Rome, but who could not follow, soon relapsed into lifeless conformity."

The movement cannot, without some considerable length and breadth of treatment, well be traced farther. It was not killed by these startling changes of 1845, but after that its field was at least. as much outside the walls of Oxford as within. With Newman at Oxford, its centre was there, even after he had seemed to withdraw from it on the first intimations, in his own mind, of his final change in faith. When he left, its direction was not removed from Oxford, but it was more largely shared by London and the country at large. It had, in fact, ceased to be strongly academical. "Those succeeding days and years are the links between what we are now," writes Church, in 1891," and the original impulse, given at Oxford, in 1833." He continues, "Those succeeding days are almost of

more importance than the history of the movement, for they vindicate it."

In a short sketch of the movement viewed exteriorly, as it must necessarily be in the limits of a sketch of this nature, the tracts themselves, while the actual warfare of the movement, cannot be so profitably discussed as their general tone and the effect produced. Their leaders were zealous men, but they erred in not considering the fields they were sowing. Their discussion of the Roman question was intemperate enough to create a counter prejudice in the minds of the Tractarians themselves, with the result of a flocking to the enemy's fold. The intellectual support of the Oxford movement fell before the advance of knowledge. The reaction of the religionists from the romanticism of its teachings appears in the men who passed through its life and beyond its influence, as did Clough and Froude; in the broad churchmen, Kingsley and Tennyson; and in the radical school, which George Eliot represents. But it was an important sign of spiritual activity in the century, and, through its able writers, has influenced in no small degree the literature to which, since its rise, we are heirs.

A THREAD FROM THE WARP OF A REPORTER'S LIFE.

EDWARD CLEMENT was new in his work of collecting, and when he went away from an unsatisfactory interview at the office of the Anthony Lead Company, the square on which the works were situated seemed turned around. It was the intersection of five commonplace streets in the tenement and boarding-house district, and the star, which was by courtesy called a square, was confusing enough to a stranger. The whistles were blowing in all the factories in the neighborhood, so Clement began to cast about for a place to get a dinner. There seemed to be no restaurant near the square, but in the window of a lower tenement just opposite, he observed a plate of beans and some pies. A sign, written on brown paper, invited customers; and, more from curiosity than hunger, the

collector pushed open the door and sat down at one of the tables. A little girl sitting in the restaurant ran to a room in the rear and was followed back by a middle-aged woman, with an anxious but pleasant face. The young man ordered steak and coffee, which soon appeared, hot and delicious. His hostess seemed apprehensive, and he spoke of the excellence of her table. A few commonplaces passed between them, and when he had finished his pie, and had pushed back to rest a little before rising, he learned that the enterprise was new that day, and that he was the first customer.

"Why don't you have a sign made and put out where it will draw trade?" he asked. "You ought to be able to attract a good many from this factory opposite, for instance."

"I would," she said, in a plaintive tone, "only I don't know much about such things, and I can't afford very much."

The collector almost smiled at this impractical excuse, but his good sense and chivalry answered that if she were willing to trust a stranger, he could get her a taking placard for very little; and he added that he could make one himself if he should try, for he felt quite an interest in this woman's undertaking.

"I'm just as much obliged to you," she began, and then, reconsidering a moment, she accepted his offer to get it done for her,to place the contract, as he suggested, good-humoredly.

The collector was not often taken into that neighborhood, but from time to time he noted that his sign had drawn trade from the factories, and another table had been put in. Once he bought some grapes and carried them to the little girl, Frankie; and she was so gleeful that he never came again without some trifle for her. Mrs. Bently was pleased, and shared her little girl's interest in the young fellow. fellow. He usually stopped to talk with her after a meal; and as she was always busy, he would walk out to the kitchen sometimes, and there visit with easy freedom. Sometimes he offered to put up a nail for her, or to straighten the stovepipe. The little girl asked him hard questions out of her arithmetic, and Edward brushed up his rusty ideas on longitude and time, areas of triangles, and the wonderful generosity of the boys who gave each other marbles until the "arithmetic man" had to ask how many